Contact centers generally exchange information with consumers through directed contacts. Directed contacts consist of emails, phone calls, or other forms of communication that are directed to the contact center or the consumer. However, many people today exchange information or interact through non-direct methods. Non-direct communications require users to post communications to third party sites or forums, but not to direct those communications to a specific person. Often, these forums are hosted by a specific organization and the discussions revolve around this organization and are also directed to the organization. For example, Twitter™ feeds from a company, Facebook™ business pages, etc. Non-direct communication methods include social media, which may include websites, networks, blogs, micro-blogs, RSS feeds, social media websites (such as, Linked-In™, Facebook™, Twitter™, MySpace™, etc.), and other types of social media.
Consumers are finding it useful to ask their questions, complain about service, and complement companies in the public forum of social media. Social media is often a “canary in a coal mine” (i.e., an early indicator) for possible service-affecting events because social media users typically express themselves on social media channels before using traditional channels like voice. The addition of social media to valid contact center channels increases the overall coverage required by today's contact center. However, contact centers have limited amounts of resources. The burden of keeping other, traditionally static, contact center self-service channels current, efficient, and useful becomes a difficult problem. Therefore, traditional contact centers do not react to trends in social media that duplicate trends from other channels so as to have refreshed, topical menus available to customers on customer service menu systems, like voice dialog via interactive voice response (“IVR”). Delays in addressing a customer crisis results in lost time, money and reputation for a business.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present improvements have been needed.